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Updated: June 12, 2025
But of the original purpose of those towers, and of the race that reared them, the inhabitants of mediæval Monomotapa, it is probable, knew less even than we know to-day. The labours and skilled observation of the late Mr.
Though they are so reasonable, and indeed afford so excellent a model to ourselves in most of their social relations, the people of Monomotapa have, I confess, certain customs which I have never clearly understood, and which my increasing study of them fails to explain to me.
The first division, between the famous Cape of Good Hope, and the mouth of the Red Sea, contains along the coast many kingdoms of the Kafrs; as the vast dominions of the Monomotapa, who is lord of all the gold mines of Africa, with those of Sofala, Mozambique, Quiloa, Pemba, Melinda, Pate, Brava, Magadoxa, and others.
And, so thinking, I gradually dropped off to sleep; and, as was not very surprising, dreamed a wonderful dream, wherein I found myself living and moving among the Monomotapa, who proved to be a very highly civilised race, possessing a vast amount of knowledge of many things that we moderns only guessed at in the most vague fashion.
I have known more than one, for instance, of this old-fashioned and bigoted lot who, when he offered a sum of money in order to be admitted to the Senate of Monomotapa, found it accepted as readily and cheerfully as though it had been offered by one of the broadest principles and most liberal mind.
The same super-rational method, as I have called it, applies to the Monomotapan judgment of political ability; for here it is not what a man has said or written, nor whether he has proved himself capable of foreseeing certain events of moment to the State, it is not these characters that determine his political career, but a mixture of other indices, one of which is that his brothers shall be younger than himself, another that when he speaks he shall strike the palm of his open left hand with his clenched right hand in a particular manner by no means commonly or easily acquired; another that he shall not wear at one and the same time a coat which is bifurcated and a hat of hemispherical outline; another that he shall keep silence upon certain types of foreigners who frequent the markets of Monomotapa, and shall even pretend that they are not foreigners but Monomotapans; and this index of statesmanship he must preserve under all circumstances, even when the foreigners in question cannot speak the Monomotapan language.
They came from that part of Monomotapa where is the great lake from which spring these great rivers. They left no other signs of the towns they passed but the heaps of ruins and the bones of inhabitants."
In Monomotapa the whole thing is settled in a very simple manner: in the first place, instead of strict laws binding men down by written words, they appoint a number of citizens who shall have it in their discretion to decide whether a man's actions are worthy of punishment or no; and these appointed citizens have also the power to assign the punishment, which may vary from a single day's imprisonment to a lifetime.
Ay, and I remember many other things also, things that happened here long before the Mashona arrived in the land, things that happened when the Monomotapa dwelt here and great cities of stone and brick covered the face of the country, when men dug gold out of the rocks and made it into ornaments for the arms, necks, and ankles of their women " "What foolishness is this that thou art talking?"
While still at Tete the son of Monomotapa paid the commandant a visit. He is named Mozungo, or "White Man", has a narrow tapering head, and probably none of the ability or energy his father possessed. He was the favorite of his father, who hoped that he would occupy his place.
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